Past Related Workshops

Here you can find links to announcements and abstracts of the related workshops from 2001 to 2009.

 

 

One Day Workshop: Heredity in the Century of the Gene (December 2005)

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2nd December, 2005, EGENIS, University of Exeter

The ESRC Research Centre for Genomics in Society (Egenis) at the University of Exeter and the Max-Planck-Institute for the History of Science (MPIWG), Berlin, are planning a joint international conference on "A Cultural History of Heredity IV: Genetics in the Twentieth Century". This workshop, scheduled to take place in Exeter in December 2006, is part of a series of workshops forming the backbone of a long-term research project on the cultural history of heredity. The project deals with the agricultural, technical, juridical, medical, and scientific practices in which the knowledge of heredity was materially entrenched and in which it gradually unfolded its effects in successive periods. The overall aim is to arrive at a better understanding of the genesis of today’s naturalistic concept of heredity. With the fourth international conference, the project is entering what has become known as “the century of the gene” (Fox-Keller). This catchphrase is questionable, of course, from a perspective of a cultural history of heredity, in as much as it gives priority to scientific conceptions of heredity. Nevertheless, Fox-Keller’s characterization of the twentieth century should be taken seriously, if only in order to de-construct it. Brushing aside the dominance of genetics over conceptions of heredity in the twentieth century as the result of mere social delusions, of mere ideology, will not help to make sense of how and why it gained this dominance, even if an apparent one only, in the first place. Looking at the twentieth century as “the century of the gene” results in some historiographical challenges for a cultural history of heredity. With the twentieth century...

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One Day Workshop: Reproduction in the Century of the Gene (March 2006)

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In the context of the two year Academic Research Collaboration programme between research groups at the ESRC Research Centre for Genomics in Society (EGenIS) at the University of Exeter and the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science a second one-day-workshop took place in Berlin this time on March 30th, 2006. “How did the rise of genetics in the last century change our concepts of inheritance?” This was the central question of the last one-day-workshop in Exeter. A variety of short contributions and statements addressed different topics, such as: philosophical analysis of different gene concepts throughout the 20th century life sciences; the introduction of the gene concept in Johannsen´s approach and the division of labor, that stood behind this approach; questions on socio-economical impacts throughout the 20th century life sciences, ranging from issues of gene patenting to the changing structure of research funding; issues on biopolitics and eugenics in Italy and Germany and the changing use of genealogical representations. The second one-day-workshop aimed to continue this informal discussion. Again, participants were asked...

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The times of cloning. Historical and cultural aspects of a biotechnological research field (March 2007)

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To create a structure for our discussion, the workshop...

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History of Plant-Breeding since 1880 (March 2008)

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Despite its high political profile and its obvious significance for understanding processes of modernization and development, the history of agricultural sciences in general – and plant-breeding in particular – remain under-researched. There are few scholars working at all on this subject, and they are scattered over a wide array of institutions and disciplines. The purpose of this workshop was to bring together historians of plant-breeding in order to identify common interests and facilitate co-operation. We therefore asked participants to present their on-going research projects rather than results from previous research. Systematic outcomes were therefore hardly to be expected. The workshop brought into focus, however, three complexes on which the interest of participants converged. •    The relationship between genetics and breeding, experts and users, experiment and agricultural production Crop plants are moving from agriculture to academia and back again, constituting "boundary objects" between production, applied, and basic research and inhabiting distinct environments or "labscapes" (Saraiva) in the course of their transplantations: the wild, agricultural and horticultural fields, experimental fields, green-houses, laboratories. Of great interest in this respect are...

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Writing Genomics: Historiographical Challenges for New Historical Developments (October 2008)

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The rise of genomics and the many transformations it has stimulated, not only in biomedicine, but also in the organization of research and production of data, is certainly one of the most significant events of late twentieth century biology. History, however, seems to be lagging behind. Although a growing corpus of case-studies focusing on different aspects of genomics is now available, the historical narratives continue to be dominated by the “actors” perspective or, in studies of science policy and socio-economical analysis, by stories lacking the fine-grained empirical content demanded by contemporary standards in the history of science. The workshop on „Writing Genomics“ originates in this feeling of unease. Not only historians, but sociologists and philosophers confess their perplexity when dealing with the difficulties of this field and its many layers of practices, disciplines, and organizations, a feeling reinforced by the  apparent acceleration of the transformations. Today, we are at the point in which having comprehensive narratives of the origin and development of this field would be not only possible, but very useful. The purpose of the meeting lies within this frame of thinking. We wish to promote a collective reflection by providing a platform for discussing and collaborating on the many issues that have arisen in the scholarship emerging from genomics. Our intention is not to come up with a catalogue of the topics relating to genomics  studied by jurists, sociologists, economists, philosophers or historians within their own framework of research. Instead it is to point out the historiographical challanges and to address some of the recurrent methodological and theoretical questions regarding the writing of the history of genomics, questions that historians and sociologists have already started to formalize in their first attempts at analyzing this new field of research.

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Making Mutations: Objects, Practices, Contexts (January 2009)

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This workshop aims to investigate mutation as a relatively unexplored phenomenon of interest in the history of biology. Analytical approaches to be employed may include the study of mutations as objects (mutants), as technical and social practices (mutagenesis, models, and networks), and in their many varied political and cultural contexts, from the dawn of genetics through the atomic era.

For the complete report cklick here.

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The tenacity of the nature/nurture divide (March 2009)

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For the last 140 years, the formula nature/nurture (Na-Nu) has captured a very basic split in the causal structure we assign to the constitution of the human. The divide determines explanatory strategies in scientific and non-scientific arenas. We capture what human beings (as individuals and as groups) are like by seeing them from the viewpoint of the capacities with which they are thrown into the world (nature, biology, heredity, genes etc.), as well as what the world does to them (nurture, “epi-biology”, culture, environment etc.). The Na-Nu distinction is of course one version of a broader complex made up of a set of analogous binary distinctions that for different purposes have been drawn in multiple settings, e.g. nature/culture, natural/artificial, innate/acquired, race/ethnicity, savage/civilized, sex/gender, animal/human etc. All of these have undergone multiple incarnations and have been subject to criticism and constant historical change. During the 20th century and these first years of the 21st, historians and philosophers of biology have been interpreting and problematizing the Na-Nu complex of world making dichotomies. Notwithstanding this longstanding and strenuous critique, the divide has been so entrenched that it always seems to re-emerge at the center of ongoing scientific and cultural debates, and has become one of the central motifs around which the ideological and political clashes of the life sciences has formed. Given the tenacity of the Na-Nu complex, its roots and underpinnings merit a closer look.

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Darwin Celebration in Mexico: Darwin in Latin America, and Darwin: the Art of Doing Science (November 2009)

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The National University of Mexico (UNAM), the Max Plank Institute for the History of Science, Berlin (MPIWG), and El Colegio Nacional (México) was hosting an international conference celebrating Charles Darwin´s bicentenary of birth and 150 years of the publication of the Origins of Species. The program included scholars from history, biology, philosophy and cultural studies from Europe, Latin America, The United States and canada, who will reflect on many of the aspects and impact of Darwin and Darwinism.
The program has been divided into two parts. The first one dealt with "Darwin in Latin America", a focal point in the voyage of the HMS Beagle, and also a crucial point for its impact on the subsequent development of Darwin´s ideas. The second part was devoted to different aspects of the practice and impact of Darwin´s ideas. A full session was devoted to the relation between Darwin and evolutionism, and art, surrounded by the magnificent paintings of the geological eras, by 19th century Mexican painter Jose Maria Velasco.

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